New Texas TMA's
Perhaps you did not know that on July 18th the Federal Register declared the great State of Texas' new Transportation Management Areas (TMAs). https://wwhttps://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/07/18/2012-17514/designation-of-transportation-management-areas.
The 4 new TMAs will not result in any new MPOs, which are responsible for the transportation in the areas (which are the boundaries of the associated urbanized area of 200K or more people--a UZA). Only 3 of the 4 new TMAs will spur new activity, given that Conroe-The Woodlands is already covered by The Houston area TMA (http://www.h-gac.com/taq/). All 4 currently serve their populations as MPOs, so not much will have to be added. Just modified.
The remaining 3, which will have to adapt to survive according to FHWA's timetable (visible here: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census_issues/urbanized_areas_and_mpo_tma/schedule/index.cfm), have to be declared by the Governor and get to work re-vamping their modeling and drafting new planning processes. They are:
1. Brownsville http://mpo.cob.us/
2. Laredo http://www.ci.laredo.tx.us/city-planning/Departments/MPO/index.html
3. Killeen-Temple http://www.ktmpo.org/
If only there were a Texas-wide MPO resource that could help them...?
